The subject of A.I. (and/or the singularity) is one ripe for cinematic exploration, and explore it we have — in Her, in Transcendence, in Chappie, in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron and Terminator: Genisys. But as that list shows, the actual quality of those films has been all over the map.

Happily, Alex Garland‘s Ex Machina seems to fall on the higher end of the spectrum. After years of writing haunting sci-fi scripts for other people, Garland finally makes his directorial debut with this simple story about two men (Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson) and a beautiful but slippery A.I. (Alicia Vikander). Get the Ex Machina early buzz from SXSW after the jump.

After a recent run of overly-hyped, but ultimately disappointing sci-fi efforts, fans of the genre finally have something worth getting excited about. Non genre filmgoers should probably get excited too. For the first time in a long time, we have an artificial intelligence film with, well, intelligence.

“Ex-Machina” has sci-fi elements too, but it is much more a psychological thriller that forces three intelligent minds to face off against each other. The film is brilliantly tense, with chilling performances by all the lead characters.

Ex Machina is the sort of science fiction film we all crave: it’s gripping entertainment (and the score, by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, will have you in knots of anxiety) that says something, that stays with you. It catches its audience off guard with nearly every scene, dark and surprising. The film has style and substance, and it has something else, too, something strange and lasting that will soak into you and leave you feeling it hours after the very cool final credits have rolled.

The director ensures this chamber piece of moral conundrums never seems too heavy-handed; his fluids camera roams through each room so that at no time does the theatrical set-up feel like a limitation. The one-location film is traditionally the preserve of first-time filmmakers, which admittedly is Garland’s status, but he executes it like a vet — with precise, robotic, pacing. The surprises are delivered as cleverly conceived pay-offs.

Ex Machina is a strong feature and a huge achievement in a number of ways. There’s a surprising amount of very effective humor courtesy of Isaac’s character, there’s an extremely riveting scenario at the core of the film and there’s also tons of stunning visual work to admire as well. But, for an exceptionally unique and layered character study, Ex Machina has a surprisingly minimal amount of humanity and that keeps the film from striking a chord on a deeper level and having a lasting effect.

There are a lot of well-worn paths down which “Ex Machina” could go and Garland heads down a few of them. This isn’t a knock, but it is to there isn’t much, thematically, in “Ex Machina” that wasn’t covered in “Blade Runner” or any of Philip K. Dick’s how-do-we-know-we-are-human fictions. (Indeed, “Ex Machina” often feels like an unofficial prequel to “Blade Runner,” a look at the early days of the Nexus 6 series in a lab at the Tyrell Corporation.)